Dial-up: Connection Dropped

This following examines various reasons that may cause disconnections from the internet, and also suggests various ways to overcome the problems

Cut-Off / Idle Times

So that all of our members can receive a high quality service, our unmetered users are disconnected after their packages indicated cut-off period is reached, or after 15 minutes idle time - although you can re-connect straight afterwards. Pay as you go users do not have an automatic disconnection.

Check your line quality

If you have a 'noisy' phone line (ie. when talking you can hear crackles, pops or any other kind of interference on the line) this can cause our computers' modem to disconnect itself from our dialup service.
To try and fix this - try plugging the modem into the main phone socket (the first one that comes into the house), not into an extension socket. Alternatively, contact the phone provider (eg. BT) and ask them if they can do anything about the line quality

Check the Timeout settings on your PC

It is possible to amend the idle time disconnection if it is set to below 15 minutes, or disable it completely. The instructions below explain how to do this;

Windows 95/98/ME

1. Go to the Control Panel by clicking on Start > Settings > Control Panel
2. Click on Dial-Up Networking (on some versions of Windows it will be called Network and Dial-Up Connections)
3. Right-click on the dialup connection you use to access our service and click on Properties
4. Click on the Dialling tab
5. At the bottom of the window you will see the words 'Disconnect if idle for xx minutes' (the number is usually set to '20')

If this option has been enabled, the white box alongside will have a small tick inside. Try either taking out the tick by moving the mouse pointer on top of it and pressing the left mouse button, or increasing the total number of minutes using the arrow buttons. Then click on all the OK buttons


Windows XP

1. Go to 'Network Connections' by clicking on, Start > Network Connections
2. Right-click on the dialup connection you use to access our service and click on Properties
3. Click on the Options tab
4. At the bottom of the window you will see the words 'Idle time before hanging up' - with a number next to this. The number is usually set to '20 minutes'
5. To stop the connection from disconnecting - change '20 minutes' to the 'never' option, or increase the total number of minutes. Then click on all the OK buttons

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